Conventional fabric softening compositions are added in the rinse cycle of the laundering process to soften fabrics. However, adding such compositions during the rinse cycle can be inconvenient for the consumer, unless the consumer has a laundry washing machine that has a built-in fabric softener dispensing unit, a removable agitator post-mounted fabric softener dispenser, or has a fabric softener dosing device such as the DOWNY® Ball. Otherwise, the consumer has to monitor the laundering process and then manually add the fabric softener to the load as soon as the rinse cycle begins.
Softening-through-the-wash (“STW”) compositions are able to soften fabrics while being added to the fabrics in the laundering process during the washing stage, negating the need to add a separate fabric conditioning composition to the rinse stage and/or drying stage of the laundering process. The STW compositions can thus be added to the load of laundry at the beginning of the laundering process, which provides the consumer with an efficient and easy way to soften fabric during the laundering process.
It is convenient to provide fabric softening compositions in the form of a unit dose. Previous attempts have been made to provide a unit dose fabric softening composition in the form of a tablet. However, such tablets tend to leave an undesirable visible residue on the treated fabrics and/or may provide only limited fabric softening benefits. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,291,421 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,110,886. Tablets are thus generally not as well accepted by the consumer as softeners in liquid or gel forms.
There has thus been a need to provide a softening-through-the-wash composition that provides effective deposition of a fabric softening active on the treated fabrics to provide a consumer noticeable softening benefit, while avoiding the deposition of a visible residue on the treated fabrics.